


I'll Be Home For Christmas

by revengeandotherdrugs



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben is a history teacher, Caleb is a soldier, Christmas Fluff, Falling In Love, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, happy holidays, shitty fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:42:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8866303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revengeandotherdrugs/pseuds/revengeandotherdrugs
Summary: Ben decides that certain Christmas traditions are indispensable even when one is spending Christmas by oneself and gets more than he bargained for but exactly what he needs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written originally for everyonehasacobblepot on tumblr. It has since been re-worked and polished and added to. 
> 
> Disclaimer 1: I don't much care for the military industrial complex at all but this fic was too cute to let it sit and languish with 4 notes on tumblr.  
> Disclaimer 2: I wrote this in an hour.  
> Disclaimer 3: I am proficient at angst but fluff eludes me like some kind of holy grail. This is my first ever actual 100% pure fluff fic I have ever written. I'm a fluffy virgin. Go easy on me. 
> 
> Have fun!

It had started as a way for his father to spread cheer after the death of Ben’s mother. After her death Christmas had become an echochamber of grief and the program had been a last ditch effort by Ben’s father to find some way to fill that empty space - to feel like he was doing something  _ more _ , like he was doing something to help that reached farther. He ran a free community dinner on Christmas day and donated to other charities but he had done that when Susannah was alive and now that she was dead he felt like that wasn’t enough. 

But to Ben, it’s just tradition. Going to the VA to sign up, buying the little gifts - necessities and other things to remind the soldiers of home. Writing letters and, when he was younger, drawing pictures to remind the soldier that they were not forgotten. When he was younger Sam had always let him put the package in the mailbox, standing on tiptoes to reach, saying a little prayer that it would arrive safely and that their soldier would be alive to receive it and enjoy what was inside.

Ben is 22 now, living on his own. He’s long since stopped saying his prayers, stopped being the apple of his father’s eye, stopped knowing where he stands without the circle of his family around him. He’s more than a little adrift and lonely and he decides, one morning, that it doesn’t feel properly like christmas without that particular tradition to look forward to. 

So he goes to the VA and puts his name on the list. 

His soldier’s name is Caleb Brewster - he has no family to speak of and comes from the same town on Long Island as Ben. Ben wonders if he knew Caleb Brewster at one point.

Ben starts putting together a box. Chocolate mostly, and cigarettes, a book, some DVDs and one or two friendly but well meaning joke gifts that he hopes will make the soldier laugh, socks because he knows that nice socks are a bit of a luxury to slither into after a long day, and a long letter describing who he is, what he does, his background and his sincere wish for the soldier to stay safe and have a wonderful holiday. 

He sends the package off three weeks before Christmas, hoping that that will give it enough time to arrive, and goes about the rest of his Christmas shopping feeling as if everything is right with the world again. 

He spends Christmas alone - all of his friends are with their families and while Nathan gamely extended an offer to come over for Christmas dinner Ben had declined. He eats his festive bowl of spaghetti while sitting on the couch and watching decidedly un-festive documentaries about lemurs. It’s lonely but he doesn’t mind. 

It starts to snow as he washes the dishes, puffy, cotton flakes of it drifting down outside the kitchen window.  He catches himself humming  _ I’ll Be Home For Christmas _ under his breath which makes the whole affair seem much more depressing. He goes to bed directly after and tries to pretend he’s not about to cry. 

 

He isn’t truly expecting a real reply from the soldier. Many soldiers send pictures or postcards or short letters in thanks and that’s enough, that’s all they’re expected to do. 

Not this year. 

On January 6th Ben receives his own package back, brown cardboard dented and shaved, like someone had opened it and then taped it shut again. He opens it, confused, to find a ration packet of some sort of pop tart-like cereal bar, a plastic baggie of dust and a 12-page letter written in two different kinds of overexcited pen. 

The soldier’s letter opens with “ _ THANK YOU!!!!!! _ ” written in block capitals with at least six exclamation points. There is something very endearing about his scrawl “ _ Did we go to the same high school? We probably did. Shit how come I didn’t know you? _ ”   He writes a lot about how much he misses New York, how much he misses the cold and the water and snow and Christmas actually feeling like Christmas. (“ _ I sent you the dust because that’s all we have for snow here and it sucks and I hate it _ ”) . He writes about how he feels forgotten sometimes and how much Ben’s package meant to him. “ _ I know you’re probably busy and stuff doing regular person things like a job and a wife and kids and stuff but maybe you could...keep writing to me? Only if you want to of course. I don’t know I’ve probably already made an ass of myself. I’m sorry. Anyway, I hope your holiday was good and that you at least have a little bit of snow. _ ”

Of course Ben writes him back. He’s lonely and has nothing else to keep his mind off his loneliness. Plus the idea of making someone else happy makes him happy.  He sends him a picture of the snow and some fake snow for good measure. 

Caleb writes back ecstatically, with a picture of some sandy landscape as a counterpoint to the snow. 

The letters become a weekly thing - nothing special or grand just little details of each of their lives and anecdotes and jokes. 

The letters become the bright point of Ben’s week - Caleb has a refreshingly droll sense of humor and an unflaggingly optimistic point of view that never fails to lift Ben’s mood.

 

Ben turns 23 in February. 

Nate and Anna take him out drinking and Abe manages to make it away from New York for a moment to join them. Sam sends him a card and his father doesn’t send him anything. 

Caleb, however, sends him a rock along with a note that reads “ _ This is late and shitty but happy birthday. I hope you majored in geology in college otherwise this is just lame and embarrassing”  _

The idea that someone he’s never even met had remembered his birthday and spent the time and money to send him a rock from across the world is almost absurd. It makes something very warm and very soft grow in Ben’s chest.

Ben replies that while he majored in history and not geology the rock is undoubtedly the best rock he has ever seen. He keeps it on the windowsill of his bedroom and sends Caleb a picture of it. 

 

They’ve been writing back and forth for about six months before Caleb suggests, in a PS at the end of one of his letters that they could skype sometime, maybe, possibly, soon?

 

Ben has been up since 7, anxiously pacing his apartment and wringing his hands. He’s nervous. The kind of nervous you get before a first date when your heart feels too big and you want to scream and run away.

They had decided that Caleb would call at 5pm his time which corresponded to 9am Ben’s time. 

His computer beeps at 9:04.

The man staring back at him is somehow exactly what he expected and also nothing like he expected. Round face, bushy beard and sparkling eyes. Stunning - of course he’s stunning.

For some reason, Ben laughs, hysterically.

Caleb grins and even through shitty laptop webcams and distance he glows.

“Hello” Caleb says, once Ben has stopped laughing.

“Hi” Ben replies. His heart is beating a mile a minute. “Hi” 

“Hello” Caleb says again, and laughs. It’s a beautiful, booming sound. Free and open and honest. Quite possibly the most beautiful sound Ben has ever heard. 

“Hi” says Ben again.

They talk for four hours, about nothing and everything. Ben shows him around his apartment and even takes him outside for a brief moment to see some proper deciduous trees.

“Oh they are so green” Caleb says, sighing “so very green” 

Ben has to tease him for that.

They establish that the reason Ben didn’t know Caleb at school was because there was five years in between them but Caleb does remember Sam, only vaguely as a name mentioned in passing. They laugh about shared Setauket childhood experiences - the seafood festival with the bouncy house that always deflated halfway through the day, the horrible putrid smell of the sound after a storm, getting chased off the golf course by angry old tourists in golf shorts.

“So you live alone?” Caleb asks while Ben gasps for breath after a fit of laughter so intense he almost fell off his chair. 

“Yeah. Just me. Why?”

“No wife? No girlfriend? No…. boyfriend?” 

“Nope,” Ben says, trying to pretend that the question didn’t set his mind running a million miles an hour. 

“Oh,” Caleb says, tone thoughtful.

They talk for a bit more and then  sign off. Ben feels lost for the rest of the day, like he’s missing something.

 

Skype calls become more regular, almost daily, thing. Sometimes they can only talk for a minute or so but the calls become the highlight of Ben’s day.

 

Ben goes back to work in late August and spends his mornings telling Caleb about his students, what they’re studying and how much he loves his job.

In turn he learns all about Caleb - his childhood spent climbing trees in his uncle’s apple orchard, his fear of spiders, why he joined the army. 

“I had no other choice” he says, shrugging, when Ben asks sometime in September “My uncle died and I didn’t exactly want to spend the rest of my life picking apples and pruning trees so I didn’t. I sold the place and joined up. I had originally wanted to join the coast guard but… life happens you know?” 

He looks sad and Ben wants nothing more than to reach across the distance and hold him close. 

So he tells Caleb about his own life - a truth for a truth. 

“My father is a preacher. A good man, a good preacher, a good dad. He raised us on his own - my mom died when I was six. He does his best but he didn’t know what to do with me when I came out” Ben shrugs “He didn’t kick me out, he was never cruel, he just… doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to understand and it’s easier for us if we just don’t talk anymore” 

The only other person he had told was Nate. 

Telling Caleb feels like being able to breathe again. 

Caleb doesn't say anything pitying or condescending - simply nods and asks Ben if he wants to watch a movie. 

They chose some godawful b-rated horror flick and keep skype running in the background with the video turned off so they can still talk while the movie plays. Caleb, it turns out, likes to commentate, cracking jokes that leave Ben howling with laughter even as the demon child jump-scares him into shrieking. 

Caleb teases him about it endlessly (“do you remember that one time you screamed like a small child at that one movie? Do you remember? That was funny. You’re funny”)

 

It’s late October when Caleb asks Ben to “sleep” with him. He calls Ben, haggard and careworn - circles the color of plums beneath his eyes. He looks small, the smallest Ben has ever seen him and it breaks his heart. 

“Will you stay?” Caleb asks, voice a croak “Just until I sleep?” 

“Of course” Ben tells him, longing to reach out and hold him close, to take whatever is hurting him away. 

Caleb falls asleep with the computer next to him. Ben, seated on the sofa, grading papers, listens to Caleb’s breathing even out into sleep and wishes he were there, in that bed next to Caleb - properly, not separated by time and distance. He wishes he could hold Caleb close and listen to his heartbeat strong and close. He wonders when he started feeling this way. 

 

It’s almost Christmas again when Caleb announces that he has leave for the holidays, that he’ll be in New York, if Ben wants to meet up? Maybe? Or not. That’s cool too.

Ben only raises an eyebrow and asks him if he has anyone to pick him up at the airport. 

Caleb says he doesn’t. 

Ben says “That’s settled then. Send me your flight info and I’ll see you then” He sounds confident but he feels like a small hoard of butterflies are trying to beat themselves to death inside his stomach.

 

They’re playing Christmas carols in the airport, the same ones on a loop. Ben has been waiting for hours - Caleb’s flight had gotten delayed on account of snow and Ben wonders, anxiously, if Caleb will even be on it when it arrives. If it arrives.

He worries about what Caleb will think of him - is he too short? What if his hair is too long? What if his sweater is the wrong kind of wool? What if his voice sounds so different over skype that Caleb hears his real voice and decides he’s annoying? What if Caleb meets him in person and decides he doesn’t like him? When did he start caring about this in the first place?

They’re playing  _ I’ll Be Home For Christmas _ over the sound-system. It makes Ben want to cry.

He’s fiddling with his cuticles when Caleb’s flight arrives.

He cranes his neck, looking for Caleb, only to realize that, besides his face,  he has no real idea what Caleb looks like.

In the end, Caleb finds him - all done up in his fatigues, duffle bag slung over one shoulder. He calls Ben’s name and waves to him awkwardly from across the crowded room.

Ben doesn’t care how many people he runs into, just that he gets to hug Caleb as soon as he possibly can.

Caleb hugs him back, warm and present and suddenly everything feels like Christmas, properly and for real.

“Hello” Caleb says, grinning that grin like sunshine - it’s so much more beautiful and warm in person, it lights up the entire airport and triggers something soft and peaceful in Ben’s chest. 

He grins back.

“Hi” 

“Hello” 

“Hi”

They stand there for a long moment, saying hello, meeting for the first time but also the millionth time, learning each other's voices without distance to distort them, catching the little details of each other that laptop screens can’t capture. 

“Hello” 

“Hi” 

Ben laughs first, peals of it, holding on to Caleb’s shoulders and leaning close.

Caleb joins him.

They stand in the arrivals concourse holding each other and laughing like maniacs. 

“It’s snowing,” Ben says finally, wiping his eyes.

“I know,” Caleb says, holding Ben close “I know” 

He takes Ben’s hand and leads him out the doors into it. 

(“ _ You know I parked in the other lot right?”  _

_ “I was trying to take charge and be romantic!”  _

_ “Shut up and kiss me Brewster. I’ve been waiting all year”  _ )

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Come say hey on tunglr.hellsite


End file.
